rtf files

users
#1

I am using LibreOffice 4.3.0.4 with Windows 7.

Until recently I have been saving my two column pages of text in rtf with no problems. I have been doing this for years with no problems. Now the program will only save this two column format as odt.

I can no longer save in rtf and retain these columns.

I am not sure when the problem started, but I think it might have been when I upgraded to v. 4.3.0.4.

I am writing a book using InDesign, which will not accept odt but will accept rtf. So I have years and years of work in rtf.

Right now, I am not a happy camper because I can find no way out of this problem

Please, can someone tell me what is going on here?

Thank you.

Carole

#2

Hi Carole,

I tried the following on Fedora Linux 4.3.1.2:

  * open a new document
  * format page to include 2 columns
  * populate the columns
  * save as .odt
  * Close and reopen - all good
  * Save the doc as .rtf
  * Close and reopen - not so good. The 2 columns are maintained but the
    contents are in different places.

Is this what you are seeing?

FYI I removed 4.3 and installed 4.1. The problem is not apparent with the older version. I have some old versions stored away so I can drill down and find when exactly this problem occurs and report to the bugzilla (I can't see anything obvious there).

Let me know if we are on the same page.

Regards

#3

Hi,

FYI I removed 4.3 and installed 4.1. The problem is not apparent with
the older version. I have some old versions stored away so I can drill
down and find when exactly this problem occurs and report to the
bugzilla (I can't see anything obvious there).

Let me know if we are on the same page.

FYI, the older versions are available here:
http://downloadarchive.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/old/

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
Rtf is an old proprietary format that is no longer being developed by
Microsoft.

It might be worth writing to the InDesign people to see if they can start
supporting ODF. ODF, is the only ISO format that is implemented
consistently as specified in the ISO specifications. As such it is
increasingly being used by governments, large organisations and many other
people too in order to ensure cross-platform and future-proof
compatibility.

Frankly it's a bit shocking to hear they don't support ODF already! I
would tend to start thinking about other tools if they are already falling
behind like that.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
I am copying some of the message back to the mailing list in the hope that
someone can help with it.

I think the answer is to create columns by using the menus
Format - Columns

The buttons/icons tend to be just for the simplest case possible.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

Hi All,

this is a bug reported by Carole towards the end of September. The issue was where data in columns in rtf files was not stored correctly.

For the record this bug has been fixed and will be release in 4.4.0.

Cheers

#7

I am using LibreOffice 4.3.0.4 with Windows 7.

Hi,

RTF is an awkward file format.

http://diaryproducts.net/for/geek/microsoft_rtf_specification_nightmare

Windows comes with a perfect RTF editor called "WordPad".

Greetings,
Andreas

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
Congrats on this and many thanks for letting all of us know about it!!

I still think that Rtf is well worth avoiding if at all possible but sadly
a whole load of people fell for MS's marketing. Even to this day there are
people who believe in using it, despite the findings of the court case. So
it's good if LO can use it with some confidence despite all it's problems.

It's going to be quite amusing when it's only non-MS packages are still
supporting the mess of old unreliable formats that MS scatters behind it.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#9

"Tom Davies":

I still think that Rtf is well worth avoiding if at all possible but sadly
a whole load of people fell for MS's marketing. Even to this day there are
people who believe in using it, despite the findings of the court case.

Which court case? RTF is rather trivial format, providing compatibility between versions from 1986 till today. If LO does not support it, it is itself to blame, not Microsoft, 'monopolies' or denizens of Nibiru.

#10

"Tom Davies":

I still think that Rtf is well worth avoiding if at all possible but
sadly
a whole load of people fell for MS's marketing. Even to this day
there are
people who believe in using it, despite the findings of the court case.

Which court case? RTF is rather trivial format, providing compatibility
between versions from 1986 till today. If LO does not support it, it is
itself to blame, not Microsoft, 'monopolies' or denizens of Nibiru.

Hi,

http://diaryproducts.net/for/geek/microsoft_rtf_specification_nightmare

Can you answer the question on top of this article? Which non-MS
application can handle every flavour of RTF you throw at it?
On a Windows box, MS WordPad is the one and only application I would
try. On my Windows boxes we have a business application which generates
RTF and opens its own RTF for editing, but it is never confronted with
any RTF from other applications.
On my Linux boxes, the first application is MS Word Viewer under Wine.
For RTF editing my preferred application is AbiWord which is excellent
in respect to RTF but not perfect. I remember files that look fine in
AbiWord and others that look fine in LibreOffice but only MS Word Viewer
handles all of them properly.

#11

RTF is not standard, and is not documented. As such, it is not a format
which can be adopted for interoperability. It was developed some years
before the development of the ODF standard, which should replace RTF and
every other document format to achieve interoperability.

#12

On Windows, I have found Atlantis to be very well behaved. It's default file format is RTF. It doesn't do tables, but everything else it does, it does well.

wwww.atlantiswordprocessor.com

Virgil

#13

Thank you.
It doesn't do tables. So this implementation is incomplete even though
it uses rtf as its default file format.

And it's Windows only. Why should I install this on a Windows box where
I already have Microsoft WordPad?

#14

"Italo Vignoli":

RTF is not standard, and is not documented.

You have been linked the specs. Also, it *is* the standard for the document interchange since 1986.

the ODF standard, which should replace RTF and
every other document format to achieve interoperability.

So you claim that the bunch of complicated XML (!) files in a ZIP archive (!!) will replace the _plain text format_ which is RTF? That's typical freetard delusion.

#15

"Andreas Säger":

Which non-MS
application can handle every flavour of RTF you throw at it?

The degree of support RTF in application is not related to the 'complexity' of RTF spec. It has to do with the feature set of particular app. Once again, if your app lacks half of the features MS Word had in its 2.0 incarnation (LO 4.4 included), it is not caused by Microsoft in any way. Blame the laziness of its developers and the complete lack of experience in office field.

For example, KWord (aka Calligra) still does not support language tagging (the feature present in MSWord 2.0) after 15 years in development. Who is to blame here?

#16

a. I'm not suggesting that you install it; I was only offering it as an example of a fairly full-featured program that uses RTF as its default file format.

b. Atlantis is much more full-featured than WordPad. It supports paragraph styles, (and implements them much better and simpler than either MS-Word or LO), multiple columns, page/section breaks, editable headers/footers, and on and on. It has one of the best built-in EPUB translators I've seen, for creation of e-books. It imports ODT files nearly flawlessly. And I have found it to be rock-solid in terms of stability. No, it's not free; it's shareware with a $35 registration, and no, it doesn't run natively under Linux (but I have run it with Wine, although not without some rough edges).

c. Again, I'm not advocating for Atlantis, only pointing out its existence in a thread about RTF files. I always use it when I need to share documents with my Word-bound colleagues.

Virgil

#17

Hi :slight_smile:
The Rtf spec kept changing at any whim of MS's. They wouldn't publish the
new specs until month or even years later. So in order to 'stay'
compatible everyone else had to reverse engineer or guess what changes MS
might have made. The reason Italo is able to point to a spec of Rtf is
because MS have abandoned it's development - not because the spec is being
handled decently.

MS was constantly promising that Rtf would be the best format for
interoperability but it never quite worked out that way. Much the same way
that DocX is panning out with all it's various "transitional" versions -
except that Rtf was never had a version that was accepted as an ISO format.

Also Rtf is not "plain text" as it contains tons of spurious coding and
formatting.

What IS curious is how MS has had such trouble implementing the ODF specs
that everyone else seems to find so easy and which have been openly
available from OASIS or (for a small fee) from the ISO people.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#18

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
I think i'm not the only one having a "bad hair day". My guess is that
most people realise what you were saying.

It is annoying to have to deal with all these different formats with
different programs most of which fall away or change beyond recognition. I
tend to find that LibreOffice/OpenOffice tend to become the best tool for
dealing with most formats that become abandoned by everyone else.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#19

ODF is the new RTF. What is your aim? Complain about developers being
lazy/stupid until the same developers implement your personal wishes?
This is a _users_ list. We can recommend solutions and workarounds based
on the availlable software tools.

#20

Open rtf in a text editor. Just like HTML, it is plain text indeed.